Use one of the last lines from one of the
miniature narratives in Joyce Carol Oates text Telling Stories (pages
7-66), and write your own miniature narrative that ends with that last line. Remember you don't need to
fully develop your characters. You don't have time to do that. But
you do need to navigate the reader to that last line of your story as swiftly
and gracefully as possible.
Remember we love twists and turns in a story, so don't be afraid to lead us in
one direction, only to direct us in the opposite direction as we return home to
that last line.

"They could not help it if their
laments sounded so beautiful." --"The Sirens" by
Franz Kafka

"She had been on the defensive before
but now she attacked. Tried to get off her father's lap and fly at me
while tears of defeat blinded her eyes." --"The Use of
Force" by William Carlos Williams

"The wind--the
wind." --"The Wind Blows" by Katherine
Mansfield

"Although boiled and shedding his
legs on the way, with his remaining strength he had dragged himself somewhere to
begin a homeless wandering, and we never saw him again."
--"Father's Last Escape" by Bruno Schulz

"That was the time she
knew." --"I Used to Live Here Once" by Jean Rhys

"They call it the house of the
crime." --"The House of the Crime" by Alberto Moravia

"But the following day, when we were
again driven to work, a 'Muslimized' Jew from Estonia who was helping me haul
steel bars tried to convince me all day that human brains are, in fact, so
tender you can eat them absolutely raw." --"The
Supper" by Tadeusz Borowski

"And I also thought: 'This means the
beyond is not happy.'" --"Cities and the Dead" by Italo
Calvino

"She turned away from the gate and
went down the road slowly, like an invalid, beginning to pick the blackjacks
from her stockings." --"Is There Nowhere Else Where We Can
Meet?" by Nadine Gordimer

"So much air left, so much sunlight,
and still he is gone." --"The Turtle Overnight" by James
Wright

"Fat, half grown, with a glossy dark
back, he stops short in his headlong rush and tries a few other moves almost
simultaneously, a bumper-car jolting in place on the white drainboard."
--"Cockroaches in Autumn" by Lydia Davis

"And before I left we made love with
considerable nostalgia, as if this last act were itself an act of memory
recalled late in the dead of some night years and an age later, the book put
aside, the cups of coffee cooling, just out of reach."
--"Coffee" by Daniel Halpern

"As long as you find that unexpected
something, or even if you don't." --"Advice to Young
Writers" by Ron Padgett

"Watching this last performance it is
difficult to imagine how this man stirred such emotions in the hearts of those
who saw him." --"The Last Days of a Famous Mime" by
Peter Carey

"'And her breath would smell like
your milk, and it's kind of a bittersweet smell, if you want to know the
truth.'" --"No One's a Mystery" by Elizabeth Tallent

"Most guys are washed up by
seventeen." --"Death of the Right Fielder" by Stuart Dybek

"A yellow brush."
--Einstein's Dreams by Alan Lightman

"I have many fears, but none is more
terrible than my fear of getting too lost in the city of my birth and never
being heard from again." --"La Cortada" by Ruth Behar